Thunaes will lead you into nature's multiplicity of colours, light, contrasts and movement. The aesthetic qualities in his work are strikingly present in each motif. When you look at a Thunaes watercolour, something will stir in you. The critics agree: there is something special about this Norwegian artist's work. His inspiration comes from a close relationship with nature. Nowhere is this more clearly evident than in his coastal landscapes. The pursuit of his craft has taken him to Italy, France, Greece and Denmark. At home in Norway, Thunaes has been particularly interested in the dramatic, often breathtaking Lofoten islands far North on the Western coast. In these pages you can see many works inspired from Thunaes's travels in this wild and remote region. Svein Olav Thunaes was born in Bergen, Norway in 1941 and studied at the Bergen College of Art. He has also been an instructor at the Oslo College of Graphic Arts and the Program for Continued Education. He is now living in Italia, in a very nice small city with the name Tarquinia, 4 km from the Mediterrian and 90 km from Rome. Public and private companies, publishers and other organisations have commissioned Thunaes for larger projects. He is member of di: Accademia Antico Poggio, Italia Italart Associazione Culrurale In connection with Svein Olav Thunæs exhibition in Galleri Aske in Oslo, Norway, writes editor and art critic Øistein Parmann: "Svein Olav Thunæs, painter and illustrator, has now his exhibiton in Oslo, where he shows his watercolors. Watercolours are usually done in small format, to contain random artistic impulses that often occur. Thunaes is one of the few who master watercolours in large format, as in his series of large mountain landscapes. In these, he has been wise and kept the foregrounds true to life. Yet in other works, he shows that he is capable of changing the entire scene to suit his purpose. This is one of things that give his work a character of its own. There is a mood of harmony and balance in his work. The artist often chooses a coastal landscape, with the sea’s peaceful horizon meeting the sky in the distance. Yet the foreground is often familiar – a boat, trees, cliffs. You’re also likely to find a romantic element here – a woman walking on a beach, to or from something. This is more than a mirror of an event; the work is lifted into the world of dreams and symbols. An exciting watercolour artist whom we look forward to see more of! Cremona, March 2008 Svein Olav Thunæs The Water-colourist of the endless transparencies. By Simone Fappanni A beating living nature, covers Svein Olav Thunæs’ watercolors. This refined Norwegian artist and illustrator can give, through the poetry of watercolor, landscapes full of delicate harmony in which it is easy and pleasant to get lost ad libitum. Through the purity of water colors, Svein Olav Thunæs defines shades of soft and chromatic intensity, made with careful and effective pencilling, where the pigment does not brake in superfluous loss, but it follows the water’s path running softly on the paper, which weight and texture are carefully chosen before performing the work, from which the artist draws a very special light, about which we need to look carefully on and to talk about. In fact, this light contributes decisively to the establishment of the work, so that each and every reflection and glare, defined with expert pencilling and using very soft brushes, creates a sort of osmosis that takes advantage of the brightness of the water pigment to calibrate and, at the same time to modulate spaces and boundaries, and not fearing any flood of color, which are indeed a fundamental part, dynamic fulcrum we would say, of the entire work. In short, not a single part of watercolors by Svein Olav Thunæs is been born by mere chance: everything derives from the passion of the artist and a painting technique continuously studied deeply thorough an excellent determination which even leads to even experimentalists outcomes of absolute respect. We refer, for instance, about the paintings where you can see the Lofoten Islands, a natural paradise that this eclectic artist manages to make it through passages of chromatic tuning meta-narrative. Merit, we are sure of a mixture, really rare to find, of a consultation between bruises and dark tones, especially in the result of special moments at dawn and at night, without reaching incongruous saturation next to an equally careful use of more bright colours, as is the case in the happy series of Italian views (remember, by heart, the views of Tarquinia, where the master resides, working in a cozy studio-workshop, and lots of Tuscan landscapes, also caught in the alternation of the seasons and in different hours of the day, in addition to many other views and human figures), creating in this way, an ideal path that can support wise perspective structures. Not by chance, in fact, the watercolors of Olav Thunæs leads us calmly to the unveiling, and almost certainly to the "discovery" of feelings and emotions that arise from deep, through the color that is mixed with the water creating a sort of "unbroken line "between what the artist wants to communicate and what the finished work represents, or rather, a story in pictures, " all mental - it is right in our opinion - to emphasize with strength and power – that becomes one of the ways of expression that belongs to whom, like Svein, has an extraordinary mastery of the art and technique of water colors. Waves, wind, sea, views that seem to be born from dreams and meet each other thanks to the their purity, that really becomes crystal clear, both in the accentuation of the primary colors in that of complementary colours, with the taste, appreciated and shared, to make unique even the smallest detail, finding in it the most appropriate way to meet the light, and introducing in an appropriate way and never merely incidental the washing. In this way, the visual architecture that comes out, far from being a sort of mosaic tiles approached badly, or worse of it, casually stacked, it is a rich work full of stimulus, both visual and emotional in the first place, but also sound, given the pace, authentic music, that gives the scanning of plans and colors, chosen by Svein Olav Thunæs to perform with endless transportation, his watercolours. For all these reasons we think that Svein Olav Thunæs can be called, rightly, the water-colourist of the endless transparencies.